


Surface Wound

by Headline (Newsy)



Series: Headline's Chronicles [6]
Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Original Character(s), POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 04:47:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/820137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Newsy/pseuds/Headline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life on a new planet brings with it new friends, new dangers and new bonds, but little insulation from bad news from the home front.  Headline finds the adjustment to Earth easier when she has to help someone else adjust as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Jazz called it a song, and I had no choice but to take his word for it.  Songs existed on Cybertron, but they were only rarely heard on a planet completely consumed by war, and they were nothing like this collection of smooth and complementary sounds produced by various manufactured instruments and the human vocal apparatus.  
  
Jazz called it an art form.  This, I could more easily believe.  Art, universally, is intended to stir the emotions, and this song did just that, more than a little uncomfortably.  The words – or _lyrics,_ as Jazz called them – were at once uplifting and soothing and like a thousand tiny energon blades piercing my Spark.  
  
Uncomfortable though it was, I played it again.  
  
“Sometimes in our lives, we all have pain, we all have sorrow… but if we are wise, we know that there’s always tomorrow… Lean on me when you’re not strong…”  The song continued, and I tried simultaneously to listen to the words and to block them out.  I sank onto the single bunk in my and Live Shot’s quarters and darkened my optics, the song still playing and the lyrics speaking of friends sharing burdens… as Moonracer and I had shared the burden of carrying Firestar’s lifeless frame at her memorial not long before my departure for Earth.  
  
The lack of newsworthy events other than the completion of the Aerialbots’ upgrade – the just-declassified Superion Project, on which I had already finished reporting as much as I could – left me with nothing but time on my hands for the moment.  Time, I quickly discovered, created that much more room for homesick wallowing.  
  
I missed Moonracer.  I missed her beloved Powerglide, and I missed the fallen Firestar’s mate Inferno, and I missed Elita One and Kup and Slamdance and Hubcap and Cybertron itself.  
  
“Just _call_ ‘em,” Live Shot’s voice broke through my reverie.  I reactivated my optics and found the tiny mech perched on the corner of the bunk, swinging his legs back and forth and grinning cheekily.  
  
“Do me a favor, short stuff,” I muttered in a gruff tone that rivaled Kup’s.  “Quit bein’ right so often.”  
  
Live Shot grinned even more broadly and, taking the hint when my fingers hovered pointedly over the communication console’s keypad, scrambled out of our quarters.  Slowly, I dialed in Moonracer’s frequency.  
  
The pale green femme looked surprised to get a call from another planet.  “What the… fresh oil?” she said, her expression brightening a bit as the video signal apparently cleared enough to show my face.  
  
“Hey – hey, ‘Racer,” I stammered.  “Hey, Glidey,” I added as Moonracer’s bondmate peeked over her shoulder.  
  
“Hey there, kid,” Powerglide greeted me before shouting to someone else.  “Big red – long-distance call!”  
  
A series of hurried, clanking footsteps signaled the arrival of Inferno.  “You made it,” he said by way of hello.  
  
“Yeah… hi, ‘Ferno,” I said in a voice barely above a whisper.  
  
“So… how’s life on this Earth place?” Moonracer asked.  
  
Whatever was left of my composure collapsed.  “I _miss_ you guys,” I whimpered.  “It’s not the same without you, and this planet’s so _weird,_ and Prime was supposed to do a sit-down with me today but he gave me the brush-off, and I can’t get anyone to tell me what’s stuck up his tailpipe, and… and… I want to come home.”  Too homesick to be ashamed of my melodramatics, I lowered my head into my arms, unable to make any further sound.  
  
I heard my three friends whispering to each other, but their words were muffled by what sounded like a hand covering the audio receiver at their end.  Moonracer was the first to reply clearly.  “Things aren’t the same here either, fresh oil,” she said sadly.  “And, um… I’m sorry you have to hear this so far away.”  
  
“Hear what?” I asked, dreading the answer.  
  
“Elita,” Moonracer replied quietly.  “Elita’s gone.”  
  
“Gone?”  I raised my head.  “As in…”  
  
“As in, killed in battle,” Inferno concluded.  
  
I slumped in my chair.  “What happened – when did…”  
  
“Earlier this planetary rotation by your time.  Three of Shockwave’s drones ambushed her,” Moonracer said.  “Time was, she could’ve taken them… but she isn’t… wasn’t young anymore, you know.”  
  
We sat silently for a few kliks.  I shuffled my feet uncomfortably.  “Will Prime be able to get back for the memorial?” I finally asked.  
  
“Mm-mm,” Powerglide said, shaking his head in the negative.  “Space bridge is the only way to get here from there on that short of notice.  It’s barely out of the testing stage… not to mention all the bridges end in Decepticon territory.”  
  
A few more kliks of silence followed.  No wonder I had – as I’d so rudely put it – _gotten the brush-off_ earlier.  “Jazz taught me a native saying for moments like this,” I said, with no small amount of self-loathing.  “Open mouth, insert foot.”  
  
Several alarms began blaring and whining all at once on Cybertron’s end of the comm-link.  Red lights flashed, tinting Moonracer’s housing to roughly match Powerglide’s and Inferno’s.  “Hate to cut this short, little lady, but we’re apparently under attack,” Powerglide reported the obvious.  
  
“How often does _under attack_ happen these days?” I asked them as they gathered their weapons.  
  
“Trust us, kiddo,” Inferno grimly said.  “You _don’t_ want to come home.”  
  
“Be safe,” I urged all three of them, raising my voice to make myself heard over the alarms.  
  
“You too,” Moonracer said just before the comm-link cut out abruptly with a burst of deafening static.  At least I hoped it was static.  Though I knew the Decepticons’ tactics had long included attacks on soft targets like residential districts, though I should have been used to such knowledge, the thought of a direct hit on Moonracer’s quarters still chilled my oil.  
  
Only a few kliks later, Slamdance hailed me.  “Headline, drop everything and –”  
  
“I know,” I somberly interrupted him.  “Elita.  I just got off the line with ‘Racer.”  
  
“I hate to ask you to be a slimeball, but is Prime talking?”  
  
“No.  And I’m not trying again.  You want someone on slimeball duty, give it to Hubs.”   
  
Slamdance’s reply surprised me.  “Maybe in a few planetary rotations, ace.  No reason to pester a grieving mech more than once a rotation.”  He absently shuffled a few datatracks in his hands.  “Here’s your Superion Project package… anything else going on Earthside?”  
  
“Um –”  Not ready for the question, I scrambled to find the miscellaneous news-of-the-day notes buried under the Superion Project material.  “There’s something about an energy-reading anomaly at the Arctic Circle, wherever that is.  Is that news?”  
  
“Any other time, yes.  Right now, probably not.  Just keep an optic on it.”  
  
“Understood.  And Slam – give Hubs my best.”  
  
“Will do.”  Slamdance smiled a bit sadly before terminating the connection.  
  
I returned to the bunk and leaned against the wall in a seated position, staring blankly at the opposite wall.  A Cybertron without Elita One was incomprehensible; she had been among the upper echelon of Autobot command longer than the majority of living Autobots had been online.  The structure of command would be briefly interrupted at best, with Ultra Magnus serving as the top mech on Cybertron and the likes of Kup, Perceptor and Blaster in line for all but automatic promotions.  The same could not be said about morale.  Elita was more than an authority figure; she was a symbol of the former greatness to which the Autobots hoped to return.  With that symbol gone, and with Optimus Prime still little more than a hopeful concept to many of the Autobots, who or what would be the Autobots’ banner now?  
  
Logically, I knew Inferno had been right.  I didn’t want to go home; home was too dangerous.  But illogically, learning of Elita’s death from so far away only made me long for Cybertron even more.  
  
As if on cue, Live Shot returned and settled next to me on the bunk.  “Are you all right?” he whispered.  
  
“Define _all right,”_ I sighed.  
  
***  
  
“Headline!”  
  
Oh, how I hated that tone in Slamdance’s voice.  This was not the pleasant wake-up call or the complimentary follow-up or even the routine assignment.  This was the unhappy boss… not fun to hear first thing after a recharge.  
  
“What’d I do?” I groggily muttered.  
  
“Why in the Pit weren’t you in this Arctic Circle place last planetary rotation?” Slamdance demanded.  Check that; this was not unhappy boss.  This was _angry_ boss.  
  
“I – we – it was – I didn’t think –” I spluttered.  Of course, as always happened when Slamdance became the angry boss, I had no answer.  Not even a transfer to another planet gave me the courage to stand up to his occasional outbursts of temper.  
  
Live Shot, on the other hand, was full of impetuous, youthful… courage.  
  
“Hey!” he shouted with a fierce glare.  “Don’t yell at Headline like that!”  
  
“Live Shot –” I tried to stop him.  
  
It wasn’t a good enough try.  “Since when do you expect us to follow Starscream everywhere he goes?”  
  
“Live Shot…”  
  
“Or do you _want_ to turn us into Seeker bait?”  
  
“Live Shot!”  
  
“Wait a klik, Headline, I’m stickin’ up for you!”  
  
“Just _stop it!”_ I yelled nearly as loudly as Slamdance had addressed me.  Live Shot in front of me and Slamdance on a video screen displayed almost identical stunned reactions, which I took as a cue to lower my volume and take my usual approach to Slamdance’s angry-boss act.  “Live Shot, I don’t need anyone to stick up for me… because Slamdance is right.  I have scrap for brains sometimes, and apparently this was one of those times.”  
  
Slamdance’s reply shocked me.  “No, the kid’s right, ace.  I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”  He tried to scowl and smile at the same time; the scowl won.  _“This_ time.  Every single other time I’ve yelled at you, I’ve been right and you know it.”  
  
“Seriously, Slam, what happened?” I asked.  
  
The display wobbled a bit, indicating that Slamdance had taken a seat and adjusted his end of the comm link.  “Something I couldn’t expect you to predict, lady.  That anomaly the ‘Cons found – it was a scientist who’s been missing since before you came online.  Since before the civil war started, in fact.”  He punched a few buttons and switched the display to a picture of the scientist in question – the _huge_ scientist in question.  “His name’s Skyfire.  He joined the ‘Cons for about two kliks and then figured out who Starscream is… some incident with some humans or something… so he’s with us now.  I don’t envy Screamer the next time they run into each other.”  
  
I stared at the massive figure on the display.  The scaling showed that he dwarfed even Optimus Prime.  “How does somebody that big go missing for a whole war?” I wondered aloud.  
  
“He plants himself in solid dihydrogen monoxide deep enough to mask even the strongest Cybertronian signal,” Slamdance explained.  
  
I puzzled over the phrase _solid dihydrogen monoxide_ for a few kliks before finding the plain-Terran-language equivalent.  “Uh, Slam, they call that _ice_ here.”  
  
“Whatever,” Slamdance dismissed me.  At least he was merely cranky boss now.  “You’re talking to him this planetary rotation.”  
  
“Just say _today,_ will ya?”  
  
“I don’t speak Earth!”  
  
“I’ll teach you.”  I flashed a cheeky grin, hoping it would bring Slamdance down another level to mildly irritated boss.  
  
“You’re talking to Skyfire _today,”_ Slamdance said pointedly.  Mildly irritated.  It worked.  “In fact, he’s probably waiting for you two right now.”  
  
Live Shot ran to the door of our quarters, flung open the door – and stopped abruptly.  Mouth hanging open, he tilted his head slowly back until he was looking directly upward, then froze and simply stared.  
  
“What’s wrong, short stuff?” I asked before seeing the answer.  Live Shot came short of knee-high to the skyscraper-mech who waited outside our door.  
  
“Big,” he gulped.  “Big… really, really… big and… big.”  
  
“Hi up there,” I said as calmly as possible, finally getting a look at the tall mech’s face and confirming my suspicions.  “You must be Skyfire.”  
  
“And you must be… Headline,” a surprisingly softspoken voice answered.  His optics flickered from dim to bright, a signal that accessing even his short-term memory banks still took some concentration.  
  
“Y-yeah,” I said.  “Good to meet you.  Please don’t squish my friend.”  
  
Skyfire smiled good-naturedly and bent as though to pick me up, but the familiar blast of an alarm stopped him.  The alarm was followed by the simultaneous buzzing of every on-board communicator within aural range and, presumably, every on-board communicator on every Autobot on the Ark.  “All Autobots, priority one,” Optimus Prime’s voice crackled over the general channel.  “Decepticon activity detected within the secure zone.  All fully functional personnel, assemble outside and defend the Ark.”  
  
“We’ll have to talk later,” Skyfire said apologetically.  I nodded, collected the still frozen Live Shot and darted back to my communication console to hail my likely still irritated boss.  
  
“Hey, uh, Slamdance?” I tentatively began.  “Talking to Skyfire right now… um, that’s not gonna happen.  But how’d you like some battle footage instead?”  
  
“Battle footage works,” Slamdance said with a surprising lack of irritation.  Neutral, relaxed boss.  Wonderful.  “Go get ‘em, kids.”  
  
“You heard him.  Let’s go,” I directed Live Shot as I transformed and opened my doors.


	2. Chapter 2

“Just for a minute,” Live Shot insisted… for the third time.  “I can get some good pictures, even in robot mode – and I won’t let them find me.  I promise.”  
  
“Every time, I tell you to stay with me,” I sighed.  
  
“And every time, I tell you I’ll stay with you next time,” Live Shot said with a wink.  
  
I threw up my hands in a gesture of surrender.  It was useless to argue anymore, and it was even more useless to tell the impulsive little mech to be careful.  Live Shot grinned and ran toward the wooded area where Hound had detected signals of a Decepticon.  
  
Hound maneuvered in and out of the trees in vehicle mode, looking for the source of the signal.  Brawn drove several vehicle-lengths behind him while Cliffjumper and Bumblebee, also in vehicle mode, idled at the edge of the woods as available backup.  Embedded with the mission on Slamdance’s orders, I remained at a safe distance behind them, left my communicator frequency open to the others’ non-encrypted messages and waited for any word.  
  
But I didn’t have to wait for word.  Jet engines, too close to be on approach to any airfield operated by the humans in the area, roared and thundered as three distinctively colored aircraft swooped grandly into view.  
  
“Con Air flights one, two and three on final approach,” Bumblebee warned Hound and Brawn.  Cliffjumper transformed and aimed his weapon in the Seekers’ direction.  Starscream, Thundercracker and Skywarp transformed, and Bumblebee altered his warning.  “Just cleared themselves to land!”  With the Decepticon trio still airborne, Bumblebee transformed alongside Cliffjumper and joined him in spraying the air with weapon fire.  Their armaments did little other than throw the flyers off balance.  
  
“And we found the bait,” Hound answered.  A yowling noise in the background identified the source of the original signal that had lured us to the scene.  “Brawn’s having no problem with him.”  
  
Brawn’s voice crackled over his open communicator.  “Let’s see if you land on your feet!” he shouted over the increasingly frantic screeching of Ravage.  
  
“Oh, wow, you should _see_ this, Headline!” Live Shot marveled.  “Brawn just picked him up, and he went flying – didn’t land on his feet, either.”  Before I had a chance to say anything in admiration of the minibot’s disproportionate strength, the three Seekers landed and charged on foot into the woods, weapons blazing.  
  
“Live Shot, get back here!” I ordered.  I worried the little mech would never last surrounded by Seekers, even with the considerable protection provided by a quartet of fighters.  
  
The only answer to my transmission came in the form of a rocket’s whoosh and a pained shout.  The weapon’s sound was that of a drone rocket from Thundercracker, and the reaction was that of Live Shot.  I tracked his coordinates, summoning all possible speed and swerving to dodge another volley from Thundercracker.  
  
I spotted Live Shot emerging from the trees, clutching his right arm tightly to his side and covering a wound on his forearm with his left hand.  Opening my rear doors, I called a quick command to him.  “In!  Now!”  
  
As soon as I felt the pounding of Live Shot’s feet against the floor of my passenger compartment, I slammed my doors shut and charged away from the battle.  Live Shot groaned quietly.  “How bad did he hit you?” I asked.  
  
“Dunno,” he mumbled.  “I’m leakin’ enough, though.”  
  
I summoned Ratchet and Wheeljack’s shared emergency frequency.  “Headline to Medical – coming in with one walking wounded!”  
  
“Acknowledged,” Ratchet replied over the emergency channel.  “We’ll be ready for you.”  
  
Behind us, the battle continued.  Bumblebee and Cliffjumper ran into the stand of trees to join what had likely become a vicious hand-to-hand struggle on the ground.  Communication from the warriors had gone silent, presumably because the four had switched to encrypted silent channels.  I diverted my attention away from the rear view and toward the road back to the Ark.  
  
“Headline?” Live Shot meekly said.  
  
I strained my aurals to hear his voice over the roar of my engine.  “Yeah, squirt?”  
  
“I shoulda stayed with you.”  
  
“We’ll talk about that later.  You’ve got a date with Ratchet first.”  
  
Live Shot groaned softly again, and I felt him shift and maneuver his frame to try to find a comfortable spot.  “Are we there yet?”  
  
“We are,” I reassured him, right as I reached the Ark and found Wheeljack waiting outside.  
  
“Where’s your walking wounded, lady?” the engineer asked.  
  
I swung my rear doors open.  “More of a _riding_ wounded.  How’s he look to you?”  
  
“Like he thinks he’s a hundred times more injured than he is,” Wheeljack laughed.  My frame lightened a bit with the positive prognosis and the removal of Live Shot’s weight.  I transformed and followed Wheeljack through the entrance of the Ark and into the medical wing, where Ratchet looked up from some final refinishing work on Jazz to acknowledge our arrival.  “There’s a bite-sized patient here for ya, Señor Crankypants.”  
  
“Ladybot,” Ratchet said by way of pointedly ignoring his new nickname, taking Live Shot from Wheeljack’s arms and placing him carefully on an exam table.  “Hey, kiddo.  I hear you got a case of Seeker-itis.”  Live Shot only nodded in reply.  “Good thing that’s my specialty,” Ratchet said with a grin.  “Never seen a case of Seeker-itis I can’t cure.  Not even –” he raised a hand to stop a noise of protest from Live Shot – “not even in a pocket-sized triple-changer.”  
  
The CMO winked at me, and I mouthed a word of thanks.  Crotchety as he was, and well-earned as his apparent new call signal may have been, Ratchet had still always been among the best at putting a flustered patient at ease.  
  
“Good news,” Ratchet said as he examined the wound on Live Shot’s arm.  The little mech watched, his fascination overcoming any urge to look away from the injury.  “This is a pretty mild case of Seeker-itis.  A quick cleanup on a few wires, a little patch and that should be it.”  
  
The word wires caused Live Shot to look up with concern.  “Is that gonna hurt?” he asked.  
  
“Little bit,” Ratchet admitted.  “But it’ll be over quick.”  
  
Live Shot squeaked and shifted nervously.  Jazz, dismissed from his exam table by Wheeljack, smiled and stopped to encourage him.  “Easy, little wingnut,” he chuckled.  “You can trust him.  He’s got a few rusty gears –”  
  
“Hey!” Ratchet yelled.  I tried and failed to stifle an outburst of laughter at the medic’s expense.  
  
“Ya know,” Jazz said with a broad smile, “I think I’m gonna shut up and let my speakers do the talking… before Crankypants there _takes out_ my speakers.”  He pressed what appeared to me to be random buttons on a panel mounted in his forearm, and a simple polyphonic melody started to emanate from his sound system.  
  
A voice joined and doubled the instrumental melody.  With the first words, I recognized it as the piece from the datatrack Jazz had loaned me, the piece I had played time and again until the words remained in my memory bank.  Tentatively, I joined in.  “Sometimes in our lives, we all have pain, we all have sorrow… but if we are wise, we know that there’s always tomorrow.”  
  
“Not bad!” Jazz interrupted me as the song went on playing and Ratchet quietly began his repair work.  Live Shot, by now thoroughly distracted from the operation, nodded eagerly in agreement with Jazz’ review.  
  
“Really?” I said.  
  
“Really.  Looks like I was right about you having a singer’s voice,” Jazz gloated.  “But you need some lessons if you _really_ wanna use it right.”  
  
I scoffed.  “Like any of us has time for lessons.”  
  
“Hound to Medical!” a crackly message came over Ratchet’s communicator.  “Cliffy’s hurt!  I’m bringing him in!”  
  
“Acknowledged,” Ratchet answered.  Wheeljack, at a silent signal from the CMO, began prepping an operating table for a potentially critical patient.  “Sorry, kiddo,” Ratchet said to Live Shot, patting him on the head.  “Be back for you later.”  
  
“What the –” Live Shot began to say.  I gently turned him toward the door as Hound, still in vehicle mode, barged into the medbay with the barely conscious Cliffjumper draped over the rear of his frame.  “Is that… Cliffy?” Live Shot quietly asked.  
  
“That’s Cliffy – Cliffjumper,” I corrected myself to inform Live Shot of the full name of this mech he had never met.  The minibot failed to respond to Ratchet when the medic lifted him onto the operating table.  His frame, though still saturated with enough color to signify the vitality of his Spark, was covered with large blotches of mech fluid and oil.  The stains had evidently come from his own fluids leaking from several holes made by Decepticon weaponry.  
  
“He’s hurt really bad, isn’t he?” Live Shot fretted.  
  
“Just watch them,” I whispered, pointing toward Wheeljack as the engineer replenished Cliffjumper’s fluids with some of the medbay’s supply.  Ratchet began sealing off severed fluid lines and patching the largest of the holes in Cliffjumper’s frame.  “They know what they’re doing.  They’ve brought mechs back who were closer to going offline than he is.”  
  
With the infusion of fluid, Cliffjumper’s color improved to its normal shade of bright red.  In response to some sort of stimulating device employed by Wheeljack, the minibot regained full consciousness and moaned in distress.  “Welcome back,” Ratchet said.  “Somebody decorated you but good.”  
  
“Yeah,” Cliffjumper groaned.  “How are you at taking down _decorations?”_  
  
Wheeljack and Ratchet continued patching the damage to Cliffjumper’s body and supplementing his fluids with more of the medbay’s stash.  Hound, meanwhile, spoke to Jazz in hushed tones, presumably briefing him on the action he and Cliffjumper had seen.  
  
Live Shot winced in pain from his own minor injury.  I sat down next to him on the exam table and patted him gently on the back.  “Ratch’ll get you fixed up in no time when he’s done over there,” I reassured him.  
  
“Now I feel bad about taking up room in here,” Live Shot said with a rueful laugh.  
  
“See?” I teased.  “That’s what you get for getting in over your head.”  
  
***  
  
Autobot warriors never had a day off, even when they needed one.  A veritable swarm of them, including the still recovering Cliffjumper, had followed Optimus Prime back north to the Arctic Circle upon Teletraan’s detection of a resurgence of Decepticon activity there.  Live Shot and I would have gone along without a second thought, but we had doctor’s orders and boss’ orders to stay behind.  Civilians got days off, even when they didn’t want them.  
  
With his injury patched and with further orders to return to medbay the next day for a routine follow-up, Live Shot should have been able to fully relax and get a needed rest cycle.  And with Live Shot recharging, I should have been able to fully concentrate on finishing my report on Cliffjumper’s improving condition, the skirmish that had wounded both him and Live Shot, and the sketchy situation reports from up north.  But neither ideal scenario was true.  At the innocent sound of a few buttons clicking on my console, the fidgety Live Shot sat bolt upright.  
  
“Can’t you slow your processor, kid?” I asked.  
  
“Mm-mm.”  Live Shot shook his head and stared at his patched arm.  “All that time on the run by myself, and this is the first time I get hit,” he said.  
  
“There’s more stuff to hide behind on Cybertron,” I reasoned, sitting on the edge of the single bunk in our quarters.  
  
“I was always able to get away from it before,” Live Shot sighed.  “I mean… I was never really in the middle of it.  I’d watch the battles and… well, yeah.  Hide behind something.”  He looked briefly up at me, then back down at his wound.  “How do they deal with getting beat up every orn or two?”  
  
“I don’t know, short stuff.  I’m a civvie, not a warrior,” I said.  “But I do know that you’ll heal up in no time flat.”  I lightly touched the fresh patch on his injury.  “Ratch and Wheeljack know what they’re doing.  They could make repairs a thousand times more complicated than this with their optics disconnected.  I mean, look at what they’re doing for Cliffjumper.”  
  
Live Shot nodded and lay back down on the bunk, staring at the ceiling.  I looked down fondly at him, grateful to see him intact and shuddering at the recent memory of his close call.  Though our time together had so far lasted only a fraction of a vorn, apparently it was a significantly long time to the indigenous life forms on Earth.  And apparently my chronometer had adapted to the local measurements of time – hours, days, weeks and months – because it felt significantly long to me as well.  Live Shot had matured greatly despite his youth that still showed now and then, and our performance on embedded assignments had become nearly automatic.  
  
“I never thought such a little mech could give me such a big scare,” I said quietly.  “You looked so much worse off than you really were when I picked you up.  Thought you were gonna be out of commission for a while, and… well, I’ve kinda gotten used to having you around.”  
  
“You don’t want to throw me off the planet anymore?” Live Shot needled me with a smile.  
  
“Not near as often as I used to,” I teased right back.  
  
Live Shot’s smile faded as quickly as it had appeared.  “I thought I was gonna be out of commission for a long time too,” he admitted, squeezing his tensed hands tightly into fists.  
  
“I’m glad we were wrong there, little guy,” I whispered, patting him softly on the shoulder.  “You’re my best friend on this crazy planet, ya know?”  
  
Before I knew it, I had a pair of arms flung around my neck.  “I like you too,” a little voice chirped into my aural receptor.  
  
“Aww.”  I returned the embrace, being careful to avoid aggravating Live Shot’s wound.  
  
“Do that thing again,” Live Shot begged me.  
  
“What thing?”  
  
 _“That_ thing.  That thing you did in the medbay.”  
  
I thought for a few kliks, then laughed out loud and placed Live Shot back on the bunk.  I straightened my posture, paused to remember the tune and began, as well as I could, to sing Earth-style.  “Lean on me when you’re not strong… and I’ll be your friend… I’ll help you carry on…”  
  
“Headline?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Can you get Jazz to teach you some more music stuff?”  
  
“Jazz is a busy mech.”  
  
“I know.  But I like when you do that.”  
  
“You want me to keep going?”  
  
“Mm-hmm.”  
  
I smiled warmly, patted the little mech on his head and continued the song.  “For it won’t be long… till I’m gonna need somebody to lean on.”  Live Shot’s optics dimmed and darkened as he dropped into a finally peaceful rest cycle.  “You just call on me, brother, when you need a hand…”  I slowly returned to my work station.  “We all need somebody to lean on.”  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Original characters Headline and Live Shot created by the author. All other characters, as well as Transformers itself, are property of Hasbro and used for non-profitable entertainment purposes only. "Lean On Me," music and lyrics by Bill Withers. And thanks to Shades of the Allspark for her brilliant two-word summation of Ratchet.


End file.
